Emergency food arriving via Berbera

Emergency food aid to tackle Ethiopia’s devastating famine is being shipped in through the Somaliland port of Berbera, officials said on Monday. The shipment – some 15,000 mt tons of wheat from the European Commission – is the first consignment of emergency aid through the port this year. But the commission – one of the largest donors in Ethiopia – is trying to shift the focus from the impoverished country’s reliance on food aid. Jean-Pierre Pierard, deputy head at the EC in Ethiopia, told IRIN that continual shipments of food aid would not resolve the underlying crisis in Ethiopia – namely poverty. “Food aid is a partial answer,” Pierard said. “It helps today but what we need are long term solutions.” He said member states of the 15-strong European Union, along with the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development, were trying to establish a “common approach”. “We are all worried about the food situation because the numbers needing food aid are increasing," he added. "We cannot keep having a succession of emergencies.” Humanitarian organisations are already gearing up for a potential crisis next year believing that as many as ten million people could need aid. The EC – which has faced criticism over its level of food aid support to Ethiopia this year – is shipping in around 445,000 mt of assistance. It is using the ports in Djibouti and Berbera, as well as local purchases of aid in both Ethiopia and the region. Landlocked Ethiopia traditionally used the ports of Massawa and Assab in Eritrea until war flared up between both countries in 1998.